One of the Home Ed. moms seamlessly organizes incursions, about once a month throughout the year, to the CSIRO educational workshops. We love them! The whole day is an event, as we have to plan ahead, leave home early to catch the train, and then often take our time getting back afterwards.
This week the education officer/friendly scientist presented a workshop called Mini-Beasts. There is a full list of available workshops here.
The journey was extra-special, as this was the first time BlueBelle used her own go-card!
Definitely worth getting if you are travelling around on public transport.
There were a number of activities set out for the children to work through. I think the activities were very thorough. From life cycles, food chains, social insects, classifying orders, parasites, pests and beneficial insects, insect anatomy, ideas on how to catch insects, insect sounds and even insect xrays.
And the facilities are terrific as well - microscopes, digital microscopes, light boxes, specimen and of course insects both models and live. We were pleased to see our old friends the stick insects - alive and thriving, unlike the specimens below.
Some entomology and related links you may like:
- Great fact sheets provided by CSIRO
- Poissonrouge Bugs
- Entomology Australia
- bugs ed
- Insect animation
- Smithsonian Institute
hands-on life cylces charts: Dragonfly; Butterfly; Beetle
Of course no day is complete without a butterfly on your nose.
in the garden
the little girl dances
behind the butterflies
1 comment:
One day I'll make it along to one of these :-)
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